


like petals from a rose

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A little bit of angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, I have a lot of emotions about the ladies of the MCU, POV Female Character, but also Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 20:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14600796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: Gamora has a mind that is sharper than the blade that she wields, and a sense of compassion that her father tells her cannot be understood in this world.Nebula is made of fragments and waste; her father has already discarded the best parts of her in favor of building something better, something pure, something “this world will need and appreciate.”Natasha has been told that she is the best, that she is more than just a girl with unbridled rage and natural skill, that she will make history and be recorded in books and stories around the world.Wanda has seen her father and her mother disappear in front of her, their bodies buried under blood and screams and rubble.Okoye has never known anything but Wakanda’s bright sky and the chants of her people; she grows up under a dome of wisdom and secrecy and community.Maria doesn’t cry even though her mother has died a few days before, because her father takes her hand and says, “we do not show emotion when we are stronger than that."





	like petals from a rose

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of feelings about the ladies of the MCU and hardly anyone got the emotional time they deserved, and also I'm emotional sill about the end of Infinity War, so, this.
> 
> "They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,  
>  **Like petals from a rose,**  
>  When suddenly across the lune  
> A wind with fingers goes."  
> \-- Emily Dickinson

Gamora has a mind that is sharper than the blade that she wields, and a sense of compassion that her father tells her cannot be understood in this world.

She fails the very first test Thanos puts in front of her, simply because she looks the wrong way. He is teaching her how to cut a piece of meat (a piece of meat will turn into a piece of rope, a piece of rope will turn into a finger, a finger will turn into a head) and Gamora is sliding her knife carefully, carefully, carefully along the underside of the thick slab, the blade nicking pulsating veins. She’s not supposed to draw blood, just skim, open slowly and quietly, the way an assassin would.

But she’s not an assassin. She is Gamora, she is a Zehobereri, she is purple haired and green skinned. She likes sweet treats and hates things that taste spicy, and she loves climbing anything within reach that can bring her higher, closer to the stars --

A sound from the other side of the vast chamber distracts her and Gamora lifts her head, taking her attention away from the task at hand.

It is her first, but not her last, mistake.

“I am disappointed.” Her father’s voice, low and deep, ripples through the cavernous space in echos as if there are dozens of him surrounding her, all big and all massive all purple. “You were supposed to concentrate.”

Gamora’s words are lost in her throat, and she swallows her meekness, silencing it. “I tried.”

“You did not try hard enough.” The piece of meat is kicked across the room and Gamora loses sight of it when she turns to meet his eyes. “That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Gamora wants to object. She is not stronger than failure. She cries at night when no one is around and writes about the places she wishes she could run away to. Her father has told her that one day she could join him here, in this uninviting and cold room, but she isn't sure she'd ever be strong enough to sit on his chair. She isn’t sure she even wants to.

A new test is placed in front of her. It’s a creature that looks tiny, fragile, and nearly dead, an alien of sorts who she supposes has met an untimely end. Gamora, fingers still gripping her knife, is supposed to draw out whatever is left of the life oozing from its body and she knows this, because this is her legacy, because she has never known anything but violence.

“The  _balance_ , little one. Concentrate on the balance.”

(Gamora never thought she’d laugh during her impending death but it was funny, it was truly  _funny_  that he pretended after all this time to love her. When he tosses her over the cliff the same way he once tossed that piece of raw meat across the throne room floor, she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

She hits the ground.

 

\-- 

 

Nebula is made of fragments and waste; her father has already discarded the best parts of her in favor of building something better, something pure, something “this world will need and appreciate.”

At first she thinks that it’s a stage, something that they will both grow out of. Nebula was not born to be a fighter and she was not born to be experimented on, so when her father chooses to pit her against the one person she has ever truly cared about, she can’t help but pull her punches. Gamora, sweet giggling Gamora who she has sang songs with and told secrets to, she smashes a fist into Nebula's mouth and claws crescent moons into her scrawny still-human arms; Nebula is calculating and smart but Gamora is faster, quicker, merciless.

The first time she lost, he replaced her eye. The second time she lost, he replaced her finger. Her left leg came from the spare part of a ship that had been abandoned on their planet, another part of her arm came from a defunct robot someone had brought to him as a prize.

She trained with her own body, with the newest cyborg parts of her, trying to be stronger, meaner, more ruthless. Every match with Gamora ended with her becoming a little less human, a little more angry, a little more cyborg.

She remembers the day he replaced her head, shaving off a thick mane of dark hair in preparation for the procedure. She remembers the words she spat at him, bellowing up at his large purple frame, as if she could actually change anything by shouting her feelings like a broken toy.

“You promised me,” she tells him in desperate anguish. “You told me that the world would appreciate me. You promised me I would be something better.”

Better would have been her and Gamora sitting in bed and giggling over something they had overheard during dinner, better would have been braiding each other’s hair when Nebula was still able to say she had any, better would have been huddling together on cold nights with the one person they trusted in this horrible, cruel, and cold world.

“I did promise that, didn’t I.” He smiles, a devilish grin, and he puts a hand on her scalp. Thick fingers produce pressure on the sides of her skull and suddenly, Nebula is reminded that she is mostly parts but she is also human, she is so very human, something malleable and soft that can be snuffed out if she is not careful about where she puts her emotions.

“But you did not try hard enough. That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Nebula wants to object. She is not stronger than failure. She doesn’t like fighting her sister and when she tries to hate her, she can’t, so she holds back and in the end, she is the one who ends up hurt. She is weak, she is not made for combat, she is only made to be a junkyard of unused and unwanted things that never worked in the first place, and likely never will again.

The pressure releases. Nebula screams. She tastes metal, a bloody cooper tinge that’s so intense it causes her to vomit onto the table she’s currently lying on.

(She watches them disappear, one by one -- Drax. Quill. Strange. Even the teenage spider-boy, she watches the tears pour down his cheeks as he pitches forward, terrified, landing in Tony Stark’s arms, and Nebula watches the world around her crash and burn and she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

There is only silence -- a deafening, crucial quiet -- and she is alone and as usual, someone else has won.

 

 

“Sister.”

Nebula looks up and arches an eyebrow as Gamora slams her drink down on the bar a little too roughly.

“Sister.”

“I should’ve known I’d find you here.”

Nebula smiles sardonically and leans on the bar table, thrusting her elbows forward. “Well, you handcuffed me to a ship and starved me for days. It’s only fair I exercise my right to get drunk in a place where no one will judge me.”

Gamora smiles and raises her drink. Nebula hesitates but then raises her own, and the two glasses shove against each other like a magnet, clicking loudly and with finality.

“So you’re still thinking about it.”

Nebula nods and Gamora sighs, causing Nebula to grip her shoulder and hold her gaze with fiery, determined eyes.

“Don’t tell me not to go. Don’t you dare -- you’ve got -- you’ve got  _no_  right to police me like that after all we’ve been through.”

Gamora furrows her brow and moves closer, placing a green palm against her sister’s cheek. “I would never tell you not to go. At least, not on my account,” she says softly, her voice barely audible against the background of the bar chatter. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not worried. Our father --”

“Adopted father,” Nebula corrects.

Gamora rolls her eyes. “Adopted father or not, he won’t hesitate to kill you if he finds you before you find him.” She stops, cracks bleeding through the scars of her voice. “You know what he wants, Nebula.”

“He wants what you don’t have, so it doesn’t matter,” Nebula says as she throws back the rest of her drink. Gamora suddenly can’t meet her eyes and she casts her gaze towards the floor, where the view seems the safest.

“Gamora.”

Gamora looks up at her sister, and Nebula narrows her eyes. “You never found the stone, right? Please tell me you never found that stone.”

Gamora wrestles with how to answer, biting down on her bottom lip. “I found the stone,” she says quietly, her voice dropping even lower. “But he’ll never know. Nebula --” She grabs her sister’s hand as Nebula recoils, trying to draw her sister back towards her. “Nebula,  _listen_  to me. I found the map to the Soul Stone and I burnt it. I burnt it to ash.” She pauses, letting her words sink in. “He won’t find the stone. And he won’t find me.”

Fear flickers in Nebula’s eyes -- fear and, Gamora notices, a look of wariness. “Promise me,” Nebula says, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tightly. “Gamora, you have to promise me that no matter what happens you will never,  _ever_  give up the location of that stone.”

Gamora takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“I know. I promise.”

 

 

Natasha has been told that she is the best, that she is more than just a girl with unbridled rage and natural skill, that she will make history and be recorded in books and stories around the world.

It starts small, the way it always does in the Red Room -- techniques and videos, lessons and drawings, indoctrinations that sear into her brain and glaze her soul, coating it with a hard shell. Eventually, there are less videos and more men, less lessons and more fights.

The first man they bring her to kill isn’t even a man. He is small, like her, and he has a young face and a jaw set in defiance, as if he has already accepted his fate at her hands. She looks into his eyes for just a second before a hood is pulled over his head, before she is handed a gun and told to shoot.

“It is your test, little one,” her teacher says as Natasha stares at her target from underneath a fringe of wispy auburn bangs. “You must prove that you are worthy, for the ceremony.”

Natasha fires.

Natasha misses.

She doesn’t mean to miss, but her arm is shaky and her aim is off. The bullet grazes the frayed fabric of the hood and embeds itself in the concrete wall instead of his skull, and there is a hiss of disapproval from somewhere behind her.

“Unacceptable.” The word is said with quiet disdain, a level disappointment that cuts into every part of her sore body, a sound that wedges itself into every open wound and buries itself in her blood like a scar.  _Unacceptable._

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, her voice rough with the aftermath of torture.

“You did not try hard enough.” The face above her is cold, distant, and unforgiving. “That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Natasha wants to object. She is not stronger than failure. She still has memories she clings to, memories of growing up in a small house in the Russian countryside with a little garden, memories of lullabies and bedtime songs from two smiling parents who had soft hands and even softer voices. She is weak because she sees their faces when she fights, because she tells herself how disappointed they would be if they knew their little girl's story was being written in blood, in human bones, in tears and lies.

They bring in another boy, this time one who looks even younger. When they pass her the gun, Natasha doesn’t hear anything accept the word  _unacceptable_  and shoots him without waiting for anyone to tell her if it’s okay.

(She stares at the ground, at the place where Wanda had been sitting just seconds before, at Vision’s grey and lifeless body. Steve collapses in front of her, breath escaping from his lungs in the same lifeless way their friends have disappeared into the air, and Natasha watches him crumple, and she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

It’s unacceptable, because there are so many people she didn’t save.

 

\--

 

Wanda has seen her father and her mother disappear in front of her, their bodies buried under blood and screams and rubble. So when she is offered a hand and a vial, she takes both without thinking, because maybe  _this_  is the reason someone gave her a second chance at life, and maybe  _this_  is where she gets to deal back all the terrible cards the world has given her.

The trials take place in dark cells and because of the procedures, she is separated from Pietro. There's another Sokovian in the same cell, one who has been injected with the same serum she’s been given, but despite Wanda's gentle prodding at conversation, she hasn’t been responsive for the past three days.

The girl dies a day later. They come to take her away in heavy suits, her body nothing more than a limp prop full of needle holes and bruises, and Wanda watches numbly while listening to them talk about how “perhaps she just wasn’t strong enough.”

The day after that is the day they decide they want to take her new powers out for a test drive.

They come into her cell and place a stack of building blocks in front of her, short wooden toys not unlike she ones she remembers playing with as a child. “Proceed,” they tell her, but Wanda is cold, and she is tired and hungry and her hair hasn’t been washed in days, and the filthy robe she's wearing itches and makes her feel grimy and disgusting, like she’s crawled out of a sewer rather than a bed. She tries to move the blocks and succeeds in knocking a few down, but when she's asked to make one implode, to crush it the way she would crush an apple or a pear, she simply doesn’t have the strength. She doesn’t know how to properly balance the energy coursing through her body and she overcompensates, nearly passing out as she collapses on the floor in what she knows is a heaving, pathetic mess.

“You did not try hard enough.”

She opens her eyes and sees a delicate frown trained in her direction, and hears the soft click of heels against the floor. Every tap sounds like a death sentence, a ticking clock that charts her survival. “That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Wanda wants to object. She is not stronger than failure. She still cries over her parents and she still has nightmares about the bombs that destroyed her home and her city. She feels alone and she doesn’t want to do this without her brother and she doesn’t think she could ever survive if it wasn’t the two of them together, if it was just her against the universe and all its cruelty.

They bring her more blocks the next day. They place her brother in the cell next to her. When she is asked to undertake the task again, she imagines someone hurting Pietro on the other side of the cell and smashes through wooden splinters as if they are ash.

(She holds Vision’s body, unable to comprehend how less than three minutes ago it had been vibrant and full of life; she had felt all of his power and all of his emotions as she bore her weight and her energy and her love into destroying the one thing keeping him alive. He said he only felt her and in turn, she had only felt him, and as she watches Thanos pull the stone from his head with as much simplicity as if he’s picking an apple from a tree, she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

She becomes dust, and feels nothing.

 

 

Standing check-ins are the new normal now that she’s on her own, but Wanda doesn’t mind.

She calls frequently. Sometimes it’s calls to Clint, a squealing Lila Barton picking up and laughing before handing the phone off to her father, sometimes it’s calls to Tony, where she receives surprisingly supportive advice from the billionaire and realizes he may have more of a heart than she’s ever assumed. Mostly, though, it’s calls to Natasha -- who, like a true spy and soldier, asks all the important things before she finally turns to less important ones.

“And you and Vision?”

Wanda smiles, wrapping a loop of sunburnt hair around her finger. “He is good.  _We_  are good.”

“And Scotland is treating you well?”

“The food is great,” Wanda says enthusiastically, launching into an entire menu of what she and Vision have cooked for dinner recently. She barely pauses to breathe, too caught up in the intricacies of recipes and baking times and sweets versus sours, and when she’s done she realizes Natasha is laughing, small spurts of amusement popping out of her mouth.

“What?” Wanda asks indignantly.

Natasha takes a moment to clear her throat. “Nothing. It's just -- your accent. It’s fading. Soon you won’t even have to pretend anymore.”

Even though Wanda can’t hear her true voice when she speaks, she knows Natasha is right. Clint has been ribbing her about where the girl from Sokovia went, and even Lila and Cooper have stopped imitating her voice during their phone calls. She knows she should be proud of the fact that she’s acclimated so well to undercover lifestyle, to American lifestyle, to life with Vision, but she also feels like she’s lost a part of herself, one that she never expected to give up.

“It doesn’t feel like that long ago,” she admits, her voice turning soft. “When we were training.”

“No,” Natasha agrees. “It doesn’t. It’s funny how fast time passes when you’re not paying attention.”

“Or running away from the government.” Wanda looks down at the ground, scuffing a booted foot against the floor. “Do you have anything?” she finds herself asking. “From before the Red Room? From before they made you the Black Widow?”

Natasha’s quiet on the other end of the line. “I have my memories,” she says finally, sounding sad. “And it may sound silly, but they matter for something. Because no matter how much of yourself you lose trying to be someone else, you always have a foundation of who you were and what you thought was important.”

Wanda swallows against a sudden lump in her throat and thinks of Pietro, of her parents, of Clint’s warm farmhouse and of Laura’s homemade bread and of children’s screams late at night, because "one more book" and "one more show" and "one more cup of water."

“I guess I can take the memories,” Wanda says, staring up at the dark, open sky. “If they end up being all that I have, in the end.”

 

 

Okoye has never known anything but Wakanda’s bright sky and the chants of her people; she grows up underneath a dome of wisdom and secrecy and community and she is told that one day, she will be the person who everyone looks up to, if she works hard and follows orders.

Her first taste of combat is watching a battle from the safety of the windows above the throne room; T’Chaka is leading a small army onto the field and they are fighting a simulation of a real attack. Okoye stands with her hands pressed against the vibranium glass and watches Wakanda’s warriors run at dizzying speeds, men and women equally garbed and armored, hologram shields and sharp swords piercing and slicing the sky. She turns to her mother with wide eyes, eager eyes, hungry eyes.

“This is what I am meant to do,” Okoye declares.

Her mother raises an eyebrow. “If this is what you are meant to do, then you must prove it.”

Okoye isn't intimidated. She has never been afraid of anything and she would never be afraid of defending her own country, no matter the cost and the toll. When her mother invites her to attend a council meeting, Okoye is expecting to sit and listen and not react despite whatever sensitive things she might hear. Instead, Ayo stands up and motions at Okoye, asking her to come meet her in the center of the room. She rises slowly and steps forward, obeying the command.

“I ask you, my future General. What life would you be willing to give for Wakanda?”

“My own,” Okoye answers without hesitation. She feels like she has passed some sort of strict test with flying colors, but Ayo doesn’t smile at her response.

“That is the wrong answer,” she says, turning around and sitting back down. Okoye stands frozen in place, the eyes of all her elders upon her, feeling small and stunned. She looks to her mother, whose gaze is focused elsewhere, and T’Chaka’s voice rumbles through the room as he continues his conversation, and everyone talks around her as if she’s invisible.

“What did I do wrong?” she asks her mother later while they’re washing their ceremonial garb and preparing for dinner. She is frustrated and tired, and her mother’s voice only makes her angrier.

“You answered the question wrong.”

Okoye’s nostrils flare and she adjusts her posture, standing tall and rigid. “Would you not ask me to give my life for my country?”

“That is irrelevant,” her mother answers with the same simple candor, as if Okoye is missing a very important point. “Wakanda is not a person or a place. It is a community. It is its people. We fight for the greater good, all of us, and we fight for our ancestors and for our future. Your answer was not wrong, Okoye, but you answered in the simplest way you could answer. You did not try hard enough. That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Okoye wants to object. She knows she’s not stronger than failure. She had felt the shame seeping through all parts of her in the throne room, she had fought back tears at her public humiliation in front of people she hoped to honor on the battlefield. She wants to serve Wakanda, but she does not want to do it as someone who loses control when she's told she's wrong. 

When she is brought before the council again with no warning, Ayo asks her the same question. Okoye stares at her and thinks, and then says, “everyone’s.”

(T’Challa is reaching forward, telling her “this is no place to die.” She hurts but he is her king, and she has sworn an oath to protect him, and she will do anything for him, even if it means moving when all she wants to do is rest. She reaches for his hand and then is holding nothing; he is disappearing in front of her, both the person and place she has spent her life fighting for are dead and ruined, and as T’Challa turns to ash, she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

She told Ayo that she would be willing to die. Somehow, she is the only one left.

 

\--

 

Maria doesn’t cry even though her mother has died a few days before, because her father takes her hand and says, “we do not show emotion when we are stronger than that” as he leads her out of the dingy hotel room they have been calling home. 

Her first fight is with a girl in boarding school, a girl who is twice her size and glares at Maria when she takes what she’s dubbed “her seat” under the large reading tree. Maria doesn’t  _want_  to fight, but the girl won’t back down. She pushes her when she tries to move, and so Maria reacts and pushes back, and then she’s lashing out with punches and yells and finding that she’s stronger than she’s realized, some innate combination of anger and grief bleeding out of her. Maria punches out her unfairness, her depression, everything she’s never said out loud to the world. She’s supposed to be expelled, but instead, someone comes to her house the next day and offers to enroll her in an organization where she will be able to train and learn and work and, yes, fight.

Maria doesn’t think of herself as a particularly violent person, but she also knows she has a darkness inside of her that she has never figured out how to tame. SHIELD tries their best, but tempering a lifetime of pent-up aggression proves to be harder than she’s expected, and her first real solo mission goes belly-up when she breaks protocol to fight another agent who decides to threaten her opinions. She rides the quinjet back to headquarters feeling jumpy, a rake clawing at her stomach and pulling up waves of nausea, because she knows she’s messed up. But she also doesn’t feel like she needs to defend herself, not until a senior agent sits her down and speaks strongly about her place and her privilege, and then marks down her trip as a failure on record.

“I don’t understand!” Maria fights back, her voice rising to match the agent’s sharp tone. “He told me I was making the wrong choice, and you said I should follow my instincts. So I did. How is that considered failure?”

“You did not try hard enough,” says the agent, looking down his nose in disdain, and even though he doesn't elaborate, Maria knows he’s not talking about the mission but about her emotions. “That is failure. And I know you are stronger than failure.”

Maria wants to object. She knows she’s not stronger than failure. Her father told her not to cry and she cried when he wasn’t looking, hiding her face in the bathroom of the funeral home. She cried when she turned her head for five seconds to avoid the teacher coming to yell at her about her fight, warm water dripping down her cheeks. She wants to help people but she can’t see herself being the sort of person who gives others orders and stays in control.

She takes her second mission alone, and when someone once again pushes her buttons, she calmly ignores them and rationalizes the situation to sneakily claim the upper hand.

("Call Klein," Fury barks, and she’s got her finger on a number, and then the truck jerks to a stop. She pitches forward, her forehead slamming into the dashboard, and when she gets out she finds no one in the vehicle in front of them. She suddenly feels strange, like something is wrong that she can’t quantify. A woman next to her turns to dust and Maria watches in horror as her own fingers disappear, her legs and her body becoming pieces of scattered ash, and as she fades away she thinks,  _I did not try hard enough. That is failure. I am stronger than failure_.)

She hopes they’ll remember her for trying to do something good.

 

 

“Thank you for meeting me, General.”

Okoye looks up as Maria takes a seat across from her. The porcelain coffee cup she’s holding is as white as the fingers that grip its handle, and as tight as the smile that graces her face.

“Of course. It is my pleasure.”

Maria puts her elbows on the table, regarding Okoye carefully. The two women sit in silence but it’s not an awkward silence, or even a tense silence –- it’s a silence that is rooted in the absolute highest mutual respect of women who have lived through war, and who have almost died defending what they love.

“I trust that King T’Challa didn’t involve you in his discussions about opening Wakanda’s resources to the world.”

Okoye can’t help the grin that flits over her usually stoic face, and she shakes her head. “He did not, and I am not surprised.”

“He didn’t alert us, either,” Maria says with a nonchalant shrug. “And that would’ve been pretty helpful considering the calls we got. But we found out the same way you did –- at the press conference.” She pauses, picking up her coffee and drinking slowly, red lips molding around the cup’s thin perimeter. “I’m sure you know this by now, but surprise proclamations that affect the world aren’t exactly our first rodeo. I know this can be overwhelming. And I know we don’t have a lot to offer you right now as SHIELD, but you should know that we have your back.”

“SHIELD.” Okoye frowns and furrows her brow. “You are not SHIELD anymore.”

“Not officially,” Maria agrees. “But just because the building doesn’t exist anymore and just because half of us are hiding underground, it doesn’t change the fact that there are people out there who still believe in protecting the world. Who still believe in being there when people need help, no matter how big the scope of that help is.”

Okoye nods. “SHIELD is not a place,” she says slowly, the weight of Maria’s words sinking into her brain and reminding her of another time she thought everything was defined by one singular component of the world. “It is its people.”

“I trust Wakanda will learn how to accept help when it is offered to them, even though they may not need it,” Maria says with a small smirk, fissures of emotion peppering her otherwise smooth voice. Okoye puts a gentle hand on her arm, black and white fusing together in understanding.

“Thank you, Ms. Hill. I believe that they will.”

 

 

Nebula is restless. She doesn't want to sleep, but Tony's persuaded her to shut her eyes for more than five minutes with the promise of keeping watch. Not that Nebula thinks he needs to keep watch. Thanos wouldn't be back, he's already completed his goal and there is nothing left for him to torture or torment.

No, she's not afraid of anyone coming back. She's afraid that if she sleeps and wakes up, she'll be forced to accept that this is real, that this is not a nightmare, that her sister and friends died and that her father did actually wipe out half the universe, and that she is actually stranded on some forgotten planet in space with only an iron-clad fighter from Earth to keep her company.

She tries to even out her breathing the way she would when she couldn’t sleep at home, when she was too afraid her father would wake her up in the middle of the night for another random sparring match that would cause her to lose another part of herself. A few inhales and exhales don’t do much; she doesn’t feel any more peaceful but she does feel slightly more tired, which is at least something.

She opens her eyes and sits up, angry at being awake again before she realizes there’s water all around her. She’s sitting in it, drenched in it; she looks around and sees an endless reflecting pool of which she is the only occupant.

"Sister."

Nebula turns around and meets Gamora’s green face, tired and battle-worn but real and genuine. "Sister." She frowns. "You’re dead."

"And you’re not," Gamora says with a smile. "Walk with me."

Nebula stands, water dripping off her clothes and down her metal fingers. Gamora takes her hand, entwining their palms together in a silent pact.

“I know you’re angry,” Gamora starts. “Because I told him where it was. But I had to. He would have killed you.”

“And in the end, it didn’t matter,” Nebula says, and suddenly the water is concrete under her bare feet, rubbles of ruined cities and bricks stained with dust that crunch as she moves. “Half the world died anyway.”

Gamora stops and puts her hand against her sister’s cheek. “I know it looks hopeless. But I promise you, sister. It is not over.”

Nebula closes her eyes, trying to remember warmth and kindness and secrets whispered under the covers. How many years had she lost in her spirals of hate, feeling like she wasn’t worth of anyone’s love or time, when they could have been fighting side-by-side and fixing the world together? How many more years would she lose not having Gamora by her side and having to fight alone, hoping she could reverse this terrible turn of events?

“Where are we?”

Gamora smiles. “Where do you  _think_  we are?”

Nebula casts a gaze around the space she’s standing in, eyes settling on russet tints and a calm, burnt sky, and, yes. She knows this place. She knows why Gamora is here, even if she wishes she didn’t.

“Do you wonder what happened to them?”

Gamora looks at her curiously. “Who?”

_The ones who failed. The ones who turned to dust. The ones who lived. The ones who were told they were too weak, the ones who tried so hard and in the end couldn’t change anything, the ones who lost. The ones who are still out there fighting for us._

_The ones who are strong enough to fix this, even if they don't believe they are._

“Everyone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @isjustprogress.


End file.
